, Madonna Marsden
The Day the Pros Faced Off with the Cons: Marquette's Most Infamous
Hockey Game

February 2, 1954 dawned

like any other wintry Marquette day: 22 degrees, overcast and
windless. For most residents, the day promised ex-tended blahs. But
for outdoor hockey enthusiast Leonard "Oakie" Brumm, the
meteorological conditions were ideal: There would be no sun to soften
and no wind to ripple the ice. His ten-man crew had been go-ing over
the rink for twenty-four hours with everything but a toothbrush,
removing bumps and cracks to create a perfect surface for the Detroit
Red Wings.

Later, when Gordie Howe skated the rink, Brumm's dream became a
reality. Howe declared the surface "the best he had ever played on."

If the ice was the best, Coach Brumm's team was undoubtedly the
worst. At 1:30 p.m., Red Wing center Dutch Rebel took the face-off
against murderers, arsonists, bank robbers and assorted other social
deviants collectively known as the Marquette Prison Pirates.

The game between the pros and the cons generated media interest and
speculation for weeks. "The prison was the attraction," says Brumm,
who from 1953 to 1957 served as its athletic director, "but the prison
team was the huge question mark. Nobody other than myself really knew
what the convicts' team would be like. Calls came in from the media
and interested parties from literally the entire hockey-playing world.
Some tried to build up the game by emphasizing the convicts' crimes
and the possibility of a real brawl. Some just could not imagine a
real hockey team made up of long term convicts playing on a
regulation-size ice rink inside prison walls."

The person who first imagined the scenario was Emery Jacques, the
prison's last politically appointed warden. Following the April 1952
Jackson Prison riot, its ringleaders had been transferred to his
custody. Although they were housed in Marquette's quarantine block,
Jacques was wary about their explosive capabilities.

Marquette's inmate population comprised the worst of the worst. They
were older: two-, three-, or four-time recidivists with terrible
reputations and volatile tempers. In July 1950, several prisoners
attempted to take Michigan's governor hostage while he was eating in
the prison dining room. In May 1953, seven prisoners armed with knives
cut their way out of Marquette's C-block with an acetylene torch.

Marquette Prison was a riot waiting to happen. Jacques was an astute
politician as well as a respected penologist who knew there were few
prospects to keep the inmates quiet and completely occupied.

According to Michigan law, convicts could perform only minimal
labor. They could grow their own food (on prison farms) and make
overalls, cigarettes, brushes, wooden boxes and snow fences for the
prison and other state institutions. Jacques could not increase the
internal jobs in the prison because two men (one black and one white)
already staffed each job. In some cases, three or four inmates were
assigned one man's tasks.

Summer was coming on, and Jacques concluded that the only way to
keep the inmates busy and the prison temperature down was through
sports and recreation. So he hired Oakie Brumm (a University of
Michigan physical education major who had coached hockey at the
Universities of Wyoming and Alaska) as prison athletic director.

From the beginning, the appointment caused controversy. Brumm built
a shuffleboard court and introduced paddleball and racquetball as
alternatives to one-wall handball during the yard exercise periods,
prompting the guards to claim he was turning the prison into a
"country club." Questions like, "What the hell kind of a playhouse do
you think we are running here?" were asked with greater frequency when
he constructed an unofficial nine-hole miniature golf course in the
main yard. "You better make damn sure nobody gets killed with those
clubs," he was warned.

The custodial staff viewed hockey sticks even more suspiciously.
Before Brumm, the prison yard had been flooded and the inmates could
either skate for pleasure or play "kick hockey," a version of soccer
on ice.

"The inmates and I saw all of this as a future hockey rink,"
recalls Brumm. "Most of the custodial staff considered this serious
escape equipment, at least until it was nailed down."

While visiting the prison, Red Wing general manager Jack Adams
noticed the construction materials and made an offhand promise that if
Brumm built it, they would come—provided someone else would pay the
bills. The costs would consist, at the very least, of a roundtrip
charter airplane from Detroit to Marquette plus first-class hotel
rooms and all meals for the Red Wing traveling party.

Jacques was confident Marquette's semi-pro Sentinels plus the
thousands of hockey fans in Marquette would foot the bill. The Warden
assured Sentinel executives that in addition to the afternoon prison
game, he could make arrangements with Adams for the pros to play
against the Sentinels in the city ice arena—the Palestra—that same
night.

The Sentinel executives never even blinked at the possible costs.
They knew that in hockey-mad Marquette the game against the Red Wings
would draw a full house to the old Palestra, and for years they had
been trying to get a "Big League" team to play the locals.

The prisoners never really expected to win their game against the
powerful professionals, but it was an event they awaited eagerly for
months. When the iron doors to the prison clanged shut behind the Red
Wings, the usually drab prison atmosphere changed dramatically.
Although sullen, gray clouds hung over the "Alcatraz of the North,"
most of the prisoners swore the sun was shining.

The game on the prison ice was the greatest thrill most of the
inmates and staff had ever experienced. Coach Ivan put his team
through a regular series of big league drills and exhibitions, and
then the Red Wings defeated the Pirates soundly by displaying some of
the sizzling stick work that made them so famous.

Richard Bok, in his Illustrated History of the Detroit Red Wings,
describes these humorous highlights of the game:

For the first several minutes…nary an inmate touched the puck.
Meanwhile, the Wings freely passed it back and forth several times on
each rush, skating around the cons as if they were pylons. After about
a minute of this dazzling stick work, someone would finally pop it
past the prisoners' goalie,…a habitual thief who had been released
from solitary especially for this game….

After 10 minutes, the Wings had a 10-0 lead. By the 15-minute mark
it had grown to 15-0. It could easily have been 50-0.

"The only time I touched the puck," laments Brumm, who installed
himself on defense, "was when I pulled it out of the back of the net."

Wings' goalie Terry Sawchuk, bored by the inactivity at his end of
the ice, sat atop his lonesome net. When he spied the puck finally
coming his way, he raced up to it and took it halfway down the ice
himself. After enduring a few more minutes of idleness, he
deliberately tripped one of Emery's Boys—so he could be sent to the
penalty box and sign a few autographs.

Meanwhile, the inmates and guards were hooting and hollering and
imploring the Wings to pour it on the overmatched cons. At one point
Ted Lindsay handed the puck to the cons' best player…. "Go, man, go,"
the Wings' captain told him.

[The prisoner] who had been embarrassed enough…looked into Terrible
Ted's scarred face.

At the prisoner-prepared banquet that followed, the Stanley Cup
champion Wings were presented with yet another trophy. Holding a
"honey bucket" (the prison's version of a maximum-security toilet)
high above his head, Adams declared: "This is a great day. I'm proud
to have such a fine ‘farm' team up here in the north. The only trouble
is, you guys sure have made it tough for me to recruit any of you."

At six o'clock the Wings departed for their hotel to rest an hour
before toying with the Sentinels and defeating them soundly before a
full house of 3,000 fans. Brumm, who had played in the afternoon game,
took up his regular position with the semi-pros. One baffled Wing
skated over to him and inquired, "How in the hell did you get out to
play down here tonight?"

"I guess throughout the entire afternoon he never realized I was
working at the prison instead of doing time!" Brumm recalls with
amusement.

The next morning, the first—and only—NHL team to play inside a
prison returned to Detroit, leaving a considerable amount of equipment
and goodwill behind. Ten weeks later, the Red Wings defeated Montreal
to win their third Stanley Cup of the decade. The following year they
won a fourth, cheered on by the 600 occupants of Marquette's long-term
penalty box.

—Madonna Marsden

Note: Brumm
recounts more memories of his Marquette Prison days in his forthcoming
(and wryly-titled book) We Only Played Home Games.